How can one become desireless in the true sense to attain spiritual enlightenment?

NEGI RK Wednesday, February 08, 2023

How can one become desireless in the true sense to attain spiritual enlightenment?

Thanks for your question and asking me to answer.

Before one becomes desireless, one must try to satisfy one's desires in a Dharmic (righteous) way. One must go on satisfying one's desires in this way for some months or years remaining conscious all the while.

Then by Divine Grace, a critical understanding comes that satisfying desires will breed more desires in turn. And that satisfying desires or the urge to pacify desires through enjoyment is like trying to quench fire by pouring ghee on it.

When this critical understanding comes that desires cannot be satisfied by fulfilling desires, then automatically the question of what next comes up.

Also with this critical understanding comes another understanding that all enjoyments which come as a result of the contact of the sense organs with the sense objects are the sources of sorrow though they appear nectar like in the beginning.

Then one automatically becomes desireless and the mind tends to go deeper and deeper within during meditation. While not in meditation, one desires satsang, studying spiritual literature so that when one sits in meditation, the mind will easily dive within.

Finally when the mind merges completely into its source, the Self, and gets annihilated, the very seed of all desires is burnt into ashes and one remains in absolute bliss.

Most of us have to go through this process in order to see the futility of pursuing desires. But there are a few people who learn the futility of pursuing their desires by observing other people and their struggles, and their eventual disappointment, frustration, and anger when their desires are not fulfilled.

These few people are the ones who would have already seen through their desires and experienced it's bitter results in their past lives itself.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi says that spiritual seekers can satisfy these four urges safely — hunger, thirst, attending the calls of nature and sleep. Anything other than these four is a bondage says, Sri Ramana Maharshi.

There must also be a strong desire to fix the mind on God's name or His form or simply on the sense of “I am" to the exclusion of everything else.

One must also hammer the idea in the mind that suffering would be result if one were to fix the mind on any other worldly object. Only then the mind will tend to remain in sadhana without going towards the objects of the senses.